Archive for the ‘Lindsey Graham’ Category

“If this is going to be bipartisanship, the country’s screwed,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, told ABC’s “This Week.” “I know bipartisanship when I see it.”

Now that lawmakers have actually had time to read and understand the complexities of the stimulus, “It’s worse than we thought.”

A series of lawmakers were on Sunday TV complaining about the stimulus….

The Washinton Post emphasized that the stimulus was bipartisan:
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“Their suggestions have been taken seriously, Bob,” Gibbs told Bob Schieffer on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “We’ll continue to reach out to them. It’s an outreach plan that includes, as you said, more than just Wednesday-night cocktails. We’re going to listen for their ideas. This president is willing to listen to anybody who has got an idea that will help get this economy moving and get people back to work.”

Axelrod said on “Fox News Sunday” that “old habits die hard.” But, he added, “the package reflects the thinking of members of both parties. And I think that over time . . . there’ll be a positive effect of just having dialogue, of just talking, which has not happened for a long time in this town.”

But many Republicans were not buying the White House line.

How can it have been bipartisan is one side says it isn’t so? Like rape, there are two stories here….

John McCain said, “It was a bad beginning because it wasn’t what we promised the American people, what President Obama promised the American people, that we would sit down together.”

Elected officials and their staffs are saying “the stimulus is very bad law. Worse than we thought.”

U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) jokes around during a news conference before the NBA All-Star basketball game at the U.S. Airways Center in Phoenix, Arizona February 15, 2009.REUTERS/Rick Scuteri (UNITED STATES)

Eleven Democratic members of the House voted against the stimulus in the previous vote.

“This is a bad bill; it won’t stimulate jobs and revive the economy, it only adds spending and debt,” said one senior Republican.

President Obama said the stimulus “will ignite recovery.”

Well, that depends upon what your mean by “ignite,” most analysts say.

It will probaably take more than one year to see any stimulative impact, economists predict.

The Republicans must have put some pressure on House members such as Joseph Cao from Louisiana, who said they might vote with the Democrats on the stimulus….No Republicans joined the Democrats in the stimulus vote….

The bill was passed 246-183 with no Republican help. It now goes to the Senate where a vote was possible late Friday to meet a deadline of passing the plan before a recess begins next week.

All but seven Democrats voted for the bill — a 1,071 page, 8-inch-thick measure that combines $281 billion in tax cuts for individuals and businesses with more than a half-trillion dollars in government spending. The money would go for infrastructure, health care and help for cash-starved state governments, among scores of programs. Seniors would get a $250 bonus Social Security check.

Obama claims the plan will save or create 3.5 million jobs, but Republicans said it won’t work because it has too little in tax cuts and spreads too much money around to everyday projects like computer upgrades for federal agencies.

“This legislation falls woefully short,” said House GOP Leader John Boehner of Ohio. “With a price tag of more than $1 trillion when you factor in interest, it costs every family almost $10,000 in added debt. This is an act of generational theft that our children and grandchildren will be paying for far into the future.”

……

“This measure is not bipartisan. It contains much that is not stimulative,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Obama’s rival for the White House. “And is nothing short — nothing short — of generational theft” since it burdens future generations with so much debt, he added.

From ABC News
“This debate is coming to an end and it really never started,” complained Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., referring to the short amount of time they had to review the bill, which was only posted around 11 p.m. Thursday.

Speaking to reporters after House voted, an exultant House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., hailed the passage of the stimulus as “transformational for our country.” Surrounded by her Democratic colleagues, Pelosi thanked Obama for his efforts in the stimulus bill.

“He did something faster than any other president in history. … I salute him for his leadership,” Pelosi said.

Instead of voting for the gargantuan package of tax cuts and public works spending, key Republicans made last ditch speeches denouncing the bill. Seven Democrats also voted against it.

“It’s disappointing the way this process has worked, and the outcome,” House Minority Leader John Boehner, waving the bulky report in his hands, said on the House floor before the vote. “Bad process leads to bad policy and that’s what we have in my view. … I hope it works but I surely have my doubts. … This is the epitome of what I came here to stop.”

“I’m going to vote no and I’m going to hope that next time. … You’ll include us and you’ll include our ideas,” the Ohio Republican said, clearly addressing Democratic leaders.

Many Republicans consider the fight over stimulus to be lost.

Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill., who represents the town of Peoria, Ill., where the president touted the stimulus Thursday, said employees from Caterpillar asked him to oppose the bill.

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) accused Senaor Lindsey Graham (R-SC) of being too “theatrical” during the Senate debate of the stimulus bill on Saturday.

“It’s clearly a ‘gay insult,'” a gay friend told me.

Ooops.

As the Huffington Post tells it:

Lindsey Graham is not only theatrical, in a different party he could have been fabulous. Larry Craig, David Vitter, Mark Foley, Charlie Crist, J. Edgar Hoover – historically a gaggle of Republicans have raised eyebrows across Capital Hill. But if Boxer is speaking in some kind of code it is fascinating to imagine what will happen if she ups the ante every day until the Stimulus Bill gets passed. Because, frankly, Lindsey looks nervous.

President Barack Obama‘s massive economic recovery package teetered in the Senate Friday after hours of backroom meetings failed to produce an agreement that could attract crucial GOP votes. Meetings continued through late afternoon between Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and key Republican moderates Susan Collins of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

Both hoped to pare back nonessential spending items in the measure, while a third moderate, Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, worked with Democrats to trim the bill’s $340 billion in tax cuts by perhaps $25 billion.

Reid suggested in a conference call with Nevada reporters that he has two GOP backers for the bill but needs at least one more because neither wants to be the crucial 60th vote if all 58 members of the Democratic caucus support Obama.

Obama kept the heat on, using his presidential megaphone — and the latest dire jobless numbers — to challenge lawmakers to act swiftly.

Democratic leaders called a late-afternoon meeting of their members to discuss the latest proposal being floated by a bipartisan group of moderate senators.

Obama sharpened his rhetoric in challenging the GOP to back the measure, arguing that last November voters rejected “partisan posturing” and “the same tried and failed approaches.”

Reid reflected the fierce sense of urgency among Democrats and the White House amid the party’s fear that Republicans were turning public opinion against the costly bill.

“The world is waiting to see what we’re going to do in the next 24 hours,” Reid said on the Senate floor, citing the bleaker economic picture.

The small group of moderates were negotiating in hopes of cutting up to $100 billion from Obama’s plan. The latest version had ballooned to $937 billion on the Senate floor, with further add-ons possible during a long day of votes Friday.

What he clearly meant to say was “We’re trying to move quickly because quick action will pay dividends not because we’re trying to jam something down people’s throats….”

If we don’t what? Jam this down people’s throats? The President of the United States used that turn of a phrase? Just like he hauled “catastrophe” out of the verbal closet this week?

The great communicator is in danger of becoming Joe Biden: a guy you don’t want off the script, off the telepromter.

It won’t matter that “I won.”

The fact is that the economy will continue downward, quick action or not, if previous economic downturns are any indicator.

Everyone says that.

So, as is often the case, when an executive (or just about anyone else) is frustrated because he doesn’t completely believe the bill of goods he’s peddling, he makes mistakes with his words and gets even more angry.

This isn’t anger to make a point: the president really is angry at Republicans who are telling him the stimulus is flawed, at Daschle for being a “limo liberal,” at the economy for robbing him of the money he needs to execute his camapaign promises, at Nancy Pelosi and the House for such a shoddy piece of legislation called “the stimulus” even though the stimulative properties are minimal, at China and others for screaming “trade war” over “Buy American”- a horrendously brainless child of Pelosi, at…well, the list goes on.

Somebody needs to tell the president: “The hits just keep on coming.”

Russia is working like the devil to close the U.S. air base that supplies Afghanistan from Kyrzykstan, in Pakistan those Afgahistan supply lines are under siege, Iran has launched a satellite into space, North Korea wants attention and threatens its own missile launch, and the Israelis remain unhappy with Hamas.

And Barack Obama is at a Spa showing his anger to a Democrats only audience. No bipartisan working group there….

He should be talking turkey with Republicans and making progress on the stimulus: and that’s why Senator Lindsey Graham accused the president of being AWOL and of an inability to lead.

President Obama should be watching the film “Dave” where the President really does roll his sleeves up (and not just for the cameras) and goes through the budget line by line.

Many Senators and Congressmen have said they doubt the president read through the stimulus…

Taking more time, even a few days, to get the most appropriate and useful stimulus just might be a better idea than passing a stimulus that is a mess of pork a few days sooner.

And the president cannot be working to solve problems in the stimulus while he is at a Democrats only meeing away from Washington DC in a Spa.

This is the largest federal spending bill ever and there have been no hearings in committee. Economists are deeply divided on the very premise of the stimulus argument. And the bill developed by Nancy Pelosi and her House Appropriations Committee — without any Republican input — is a massive money give-away and not primarily a jobs bill. It is a spending bill.

So the reason Barack Obama looks angry from time to time these days is this: he’s been cheated by Nancy Pelosi and the House and now he is trying to foist upon the American people something he knows and they know is not just less than perfect, its bad; but its also not as bad as Lindsey Graham thinks.

The Barack Obama of “Hope” has quickly morphed himslf into the “Catastrophe President.”

His word, not mine.

John E. Carey
Wakefield Chapel, Virginia

If this is a “catastrophe” I’d hate to see what “No Drama Obama” calls a terrorist attack using nuclear or biological weapons (God save us). There are people out of jobs — a lot of people — but they aren’t dead.

President Obama is fed up. He’s “impatient,” “frustrated” and “combatative” according to White House Press Corps members that asked questions of spokesman Robert Gibbs today.

The president has asked the networks for air time on Monday for a national address to discuss his position on the stimulus.

All the talk of bipartisanship now seems on hold. At the Department of Energy today, the president showed what some observers called “dismay” at what the White House is calling a “failure to act” in the U.S. Senate.

Senators dipute that, saying this is the legislative process in action.

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) said “This takes time. We’re all trying to get the best stimulus bill.”

Republican and former Bush advisor Karl Rove said, “The biggest problem with this stimulus is that it just doesn’t create enough jobs.”

Rove said Obama “outsourced the creation of this bill to the House Appropriations Committee. The problems in this bill belong to President Obama. He made a leadership mistake.”

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said, “I like President Obama but giving TV interviews is not leading. Having lunch with people is not leading. Scaring people is not leading.”

He said the president was “AWOL on the stimulus,” using the military term for “absent without official leave.”

Indian authorities say the attackers were members of a banned Pakistani militant group that was set up by the country’s intelligence agencies to battle Indian rule in the disputed Kashmir region.

The attacks have ratcheted up tensions between the nuclear-armed countries, which have fought three wars in the last 60 years.

Asked about the possibility that India may take military action if Pakistan does not react to its allegations, McCain said he believed Islamabad would cooperate with India and take timely “specific acts to avert any further deepening of this crisis.

“From our meetings we have had today we are encouraged that the government of Pakistan will show that cooperation in words and deed,” he told reporters after meetings with Pakistan’s prime minister and military chief.

McCain came to Pakistan with two other U.S. senators — Joseph Lieberman and Lindsey Graham — as part of a regional tour as members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. They previously visited India.

Lieberman said he was encouraged that Pakistan “will not allow the terrorists to divide this country from either its allies in Washington or its neighbors in New Delhi.”

The attacks have triggered an intense round of diplomacy to stop relations between the two countries deteriorating, something Washington fears will affect its campaign against al-Qaida in the region.

Earlier, the government denied reports that a man pretending to be India’s foreign minister spoke to President Asif Ali Zardari over the phone during the Mumbai attacks.

Dawn newspaper reported the alleged hoax call Saturday, and said it prompted Pakistan to put its air force on high alert. A security official later said a man pretending to be Foreign MinisterPranab Mukherjee had spoken to him in a “threatening manner.”

But Information Minister Sherry Rehman said in a statement that the call “was placed from a verified official phone number of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs.”

She did not explicitly say that the call was from Mukherjee, but two other government officials said it was him. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

Pakistan says it has yet to see any proof of New Delhi’s allegations that its citizens were involved in the Mumbai attacks, but is prepared to cooperate with India. It has denied any of its state agencies were involved, noting it too is a victim of terrorism.